Award winning writer and critic, accountant, and also skunk furry. I write BRAND ECHO with Ing and I write other things at other places. Mostly SFW, but minor DNI anyways
♫♪ Makin' your way on the net today, ♫♪
♫♪ Takes everything you got ♫♪
♫♪ Takin' a break from all the Numbers™, ♫♪
♫♪ Sure did help a lot ♫♪
♫♪ It was nice to get awayyyyy ♫♪
♫♪ Sometimes you wanna post, ♫♪
♫♪ At your Cohost day and night (da da da) ♫♪
♫♪ Where you scroll the fourth website (da da da) ♫♪
♫♪ You wanna go where yinglets post, where there's no one chasing fame, ♫♪
♫♪ You wanna go where Eggbug's gonna know, your name (do da do da da da) ♫♪
I am out of time and don't have much to say that I didn't already say. But I'll say this.
Thank you, Cohost, for a place to heal, because I needed it more than anything else.
Thank you, Cohost, for a place to connect, with sides of people I never saw anywhere else.
Thank you, Cohost, for letting us goof with CSS and discover the joys of goofing off online.
Thank you, Cohost, for declining app stores and letting people be insanely horny in ways the climate-controlled shopping malls of the rest of Online have run from.
Thank you, Cohost, for being a website that wasn't the social media equivalent of junk food (and now, to extend the metaphor, my palette has shifted to the point I fear I can't go back to the processed sugar of other sites.)
And especially, thank you Cohost, for ending properly, instead of turning into a shambling zombie website where we never know if it's fully alive or dead. MySpace lives on, but it's not living. Maybe knowing when to cash in your chips is the better way.
I'm feeling gutted right now. Cohost is just, nice.
The rest of the post-Gamergate internet has had me in a defensive crouch, with few exceptions. Everywhere else I go, I feel like I'm walking down a street with a hornet's nest in every tree, and talking to people who are like "lol, lmao" as they kick it, or point and laugh as someone else bumps into it by accident.
Twitter is a site that destroyed my mental health, that became a place I couldn't even type the word 'cis.' Bluesky is Earth-2 Twitter and will inevitably have the same problems. Tumblr has heavy levels of Fandom to the point I feel it loves things more than people, which as any Pratchett fan knows is the cardinal sin of our time. Mastodon is fine, right up until a moderator's ex-girlfriend's girlfriend's ex-girlfriend posts a bad opinion and within twelve hours everyone is defederating from everyone else, including people who had nothing to do with it.
I didn't feel any of that here. I called my time on this site, the Cohost Exhale; being able to stretch a little and relax. 1
I admire what ASSC set out to do, and for a time, did. They really did try to create a space where your data was not sold and you were more than a target market, a place for posting first and foremost. A place to be, as the Internet used to be. And it was so, nice.
And it didn't work out, and damned if that ain't a sad indictment of the internet in 2024.
I'll really, really miss this place.
But I'm gonna try to smile because it happened. Nothing lasts forever, but I'll always have fond memories of Cohost. And I did so much healing on this site that I'll cherish the good it did me.
Anyways! Other places to find me.
https://charlottearielfinn.com/ - my blog!
https://arielfinn.social/@Charlotte - Mastodon!
https://bsky.app/profile/bycharlottefinn.bsky.social - Bluesky!
https://charlottefinn.tumblr.com/ - Tumblr!
(I know this wasn't everyone's experience, and I'm sorry for those that didn't find a home here.)
Without numbers there's no engagement chasing, and it turns out, that fuels a lot of the worst examples of poster's brain!
I'm feeling gutted right now. Cohost is just, nice.
The rest of the post-Gamergate internet has had me in a defensive crouch, with few exceptions. Everywhere else I go, I feel like I'm walking down a street with a hornet's nest in every tree, and talking to people who are like "lol, lmao" as they kick it, or point and laugh as someone else bumps into it by accident.
Twitter is a site that destroyed my mental health, that became a place I couldn't even type the word 'cis.' Bluesky is Earth-2 Twitter and will inevitably have the same problems. Tumblr has heavy levels of Fandom to the point I feel it loves things more than people, which as any Pratchett fan knows is the cardinal sin of our time. Mastodon is fine, right up until a moderator's ex-girlfriend's girlfriend's ex-girlfriend posts a bad opinion and within twelve hours everyone is defederating from everyone else, including people who had nothing to do with it.
I didn't feel any of that here. I called my time on this site, the Cohost Exhale; being able to stretch a little and relax. 1
I admire what ASSC set out to do, and for a time, did. They really did try to create a space where your data was not sold and you were more than a target market, a place for posting first and foremost. A place to be, as the Internet used to be. And it was so, nice.
And it didn't work out, and damned if that ain't a sad indictment of the internet in 2024.
I'll really, really miss this place.
But I'm gonna try to smile because it happened. Nothing lasts forever, but I'll always have fond memories of Cohost. And I did so much healing on this site that I'll cherish the good it did me.
Anyways! Other places to find me.
https://charlottearielfinn.com/ - my blog!
https://arielfinn.social/@Charlotte - Mastodon!
https://bsky.app/profile/bycharlottefinn.bsky.social - Bluesky!
https://charlottefinn.tumblr.com/ - Tumblr!
(I know this wasn't everyone's experience, and I'm sorry for those that didn't find a home here.)
